Bright Shade

by Chelsea Harlan, Jericho Brown (Introduction)

Overview

Winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown

Bright Shade is an appreciation of the wild woods, the rolling hills, the Appalachian air, and the little rivers that were the setting of Chelsea Harlan’s upbringing. The poems speak through the liminal space between the body and its relationships to other bodies, and the human relationship with nature—and so climate change is, inevitably, part of this book's undercurrent of grief. As the author navigates the high highs and the low lows of manic depression, Bright Shade articulates the wonder that accompanies sadness and the sadness that accompanies joy. Chelsea Harlan’s work is humorous, indeed bittersweet (bright / shade), and a little strange in exactly the right way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780986093869
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Series:	APR/Honickman First Book Prize
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Chelsea Harlan was born and raised in Appalachia. She holds a BA in Literature and Visual Art from Bennington College, as well as an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College. Her chapbook Mummy, written in collaboration with London-based painter Daisy Parris, was released by Montez Press in 2019, and her chapbook Country Music was released from Two Plum Press. She received the 2021 Robert Watson Literary Award from The Greensboro Review for her poem “Some Sunlight,” and she received the 2019-2020 Mikrokosmos Poetry Prize for her poem “Grimaldo’s Chair,” selected by sam sax.

Read an Excerpt

Nature Documentary

The cats do this thing where they sleep

all day in America waiting to be loved

The Big Egg

Woof, mindfulness is exhausting

but the thing is it’s so ineffable

it’s resistant to irony

Mindfulness doesn’t give a fuck

about what you think about mindfulness

That’s the beauty of it, I say

 

The moon sure is full of itself

Do you ever see a rabbit in it

churning some butter, or

 

Mindfulness’s indifferent, like the wind

That’s beautiful, he says thoughtfully

and carefully all falls still in the yard

 

Thank you, I reply

walleyed, I put it in a

romantic poem

I put the moon in most passwords

Romance Language

It’s the endangered language of endangered birds.

High notes neglected by textbook indexes, low notes too.

It’s a whoop and a coo and the trilling of a trumpet all at once.

It’s the sound of the ocean waving its infinite wet handkerchiefs goodbye, goodbye... It’s all the tears the sky has ever cried.

It’s the language between one bell and another bell as they chime the same

song. You can hear the ding of the brass pass across the mossy quadrangle...

It’s written only in ribbons of lemon and orange peel curls.

It’s Jimmy Mack’s explanation for disappearing in the first place. It’s writ in glass rejectamenta down at Dead Horse Bay.

You can piece it back together if you have a thousand odd years.

The instructions are written in... this language.

It’s the language of many-teethed sunflowers’ midsummer chatter.

It’s the language of babbling, dribbling, blubbering, shrubbery, and

bubblegum. Hobby linguists found this language in a cobblestone cubbyhole.

It’s the language of chauffeurs’ idling cars’ doors held ajar in the hot air of the parking lot.

It’s the slow opening of chiffonier and credenza drawers...

It’s the shimmying walls of a canyon refracting an echo of the words echo and I love you, I love you.

It’s the language of mothers and of motherfuckers and it has no gender.

It sounds like it’s important, and it is...

It’s the language of the historical future, after all.

It rolls off the tongue and lands in the mossy quadrangle of the past.

It’s a time traveling language that will outlive the mouth.

It rolls off the tongue into traffic and survives.

It’s a limited edition miracle.

It’s different from coincidence, but eerily similar...

It’s the rare phenomenon of double jinx. / It’s the rare phenomenon of double jinx.

It’s the secret ingredient in a good aurora borealis but shh.

It rolls off the tongue and back up the tongue and you can swallow it whole.

You can swallow it like a vitamin, or a mouse if you’re a hungry snake.

You can pick it up simply by listening. (I love you...)

You can pick it up with your bare hands, just know that this language is heavy.

It’s the language the seashell itself hears.

It’s the language of rustling bushes, hushes, crushes...

It’s the language bad boys teach you after curfew in the

park. As with any other language, learn the curse words first.

You can learn it on a long drive or on a slow train.

You can learn it on a golden gondola gliding through the gloom.

You can learn it in the last room of a large museum.

It’s the wind in winter woods like whew... (I love you...)

It’s the rains that finally arrive, writhing down the mountainside.

Your face flushes when you speak it. You can’t help it...

It ushers new eras. It tickles the ears.

It’s a green mound. It’s a mondegreen.

It flies from the diaphragm lean with ambition.

Miracle-Gro

Gloria instructs me to protect the climbing vine

best I can from the blackberry bush

And my arms tear open like junk mail

from the thorns and I do feel closer to Jesus

however miniature my suffering by comparison

and small the central sliver of our Venn diagram otherwise

A valiant effort is made in the garden

And later a box of new socks and old pears appears in the room

among other goodies from over the mountain

the pears from Argentina

 

sweet in that distinctively milky pear way

freckled from their marathon journey

You wonder if there exists a pear without freckles

If freckles are punctuation marks in the paragraph of the face

 

If freckles were among the smallest shrapnel

expelled in the glossy dawn of the universe

What a time to be alive

I wonder unironically aloud to no one

Table of Contents

Introduction Jericho Brown 1

1

Nature Documentary 9

The Big Egg 10

Bright Angel 11

In the Rearview 12

Love Poem Called Die Hard 14

Here and There 15

Still Time All Day 17

Poem for a Fern 18

Mama Recites the Birds 19

2

Bobby Boris Pickett 23

It's Sunday so We Get High by the River 24

I Went for a Long Ride 25

Sonnet Near Zyzzyx 26

Adidas 27

Plain Air 29

Two Pilgrims 30

Things We've Thrown 31

Mama Recites the Trees 32

Miracle-Gro 36

3

Career 39

Some Sunlight 40

Beautiful Daggers 41

Homecoming Pain 42

Sweet Pea 43

Jenny Talking about Twilight Knowing 44

Future Brooches 45

Late Spring Poem 46

Leaving the House 50

4

Summer of the Wild Boars 53

The Long Blue Dress 54

Mama Sows the Ginseng Seeds 56

Romance Language 57

Sonnet for a Good Cry in the Woods 60

Nightgown 61

I Have Yet More Esotericism to Share 62

True Life: 63

5

Grimaldo's Chair 67

The Little News 68

He Loves Me 69

The Fleece 70

Poem for a Fieldmouse 72

My Neighbor Says His Friend Says 73

Mama Recites the Horses 74

Alone Time 77

Sonnet from Last July 79

6

Drama Club 83

Another Sunday Poem 84

The Birds Did It 86

Aimlessness 87

Sonnet for Your Soils 88

This Is Also That 89

Mama Recites the Plot of a Liam Neeson Movie Called Honest Thief 90

After Hours 91

Livepower, or, Biodynamism 94

Benediction 95

Resolutions 97

Notes 98

Acknowledgments 100